St. Paul daily globe. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn.) 1884-1896, 1887-09-25
yEARAIAe FOR HUSBANDS.
A Call For Help Floats Out From New
England to the Hen of
the West. X
Spinsterheod is the Crying Evil in
Community of Pretty and Intel
ligent Girls.
Some of the Causes That Have Produced
This ResuH---An Opening for
Young Hen.

-H.c Z<QOp ttlSlllutAOu ira z
&NNfNGW same all over New
England. Jus
what has brought about such a pre-
ponderance OF spinSterhood it would
be hard to say. People have commended
that it didn't exist, aad have explained
the immense surplus of women in New
England on the superstition that most
OF them are WIDOWS, made so by the
hazardous occupations of the men on
the Eastern coast. Widows there are in
plenty, but these sixty-one-and every
body who knows ANYTHING of New
England will find if an easy matter to
call up plenty of similar instances
have certainly never married: prob
abably most of them have
never had an opportunity to
marry. There are very few mar
rlageable young men to be found at the
present time in any smalliSh New Eng
land town says Boston correspondent
of the Chicago Herald. The serene
quiet OF the most lethargic section of
these United States doesn't suit
young man. He goes away before he
is old enough to marry. and the chances
are he doesn't come back again. He is
drummer out on the road somewhere,
or he finds his way into business in BOS-
ton. New York or the West. If he
makes vacation trip home he is i'm
pressed by the lack of money in New
England outside the cities, by the length
of time since the houses have been
painted, and the amount of calculation
required before dollar can be eX-
pended. He doesn't stay long enough to
admire the hardy thrift that can wiring
a comfortable support out of a rocky
soil where Il New Yorker would Starve
or commit suicide. and the girls he
left behind him cannot compare. so he
thinks ON his return. for beauty of
dress or pretty coquetry of manner or
small talk of society with the city girl.
who has become inSensibly his stand
ard of girlhood. Not that he expects to
marry the city girl-nOt at all, no. The
newspapers have Slandered her to the
transplanted country young man until
between ice cream in summer and seal
skins i'll the winter, civilization would
be justified, if it put much faith i'm news
papers. in tiinging its girl babies into
the Charles river. or the Hudson. to rid
the world of such useless incumbranceS.
The fairly Well-meaning and domestic
young man thinks he doesn't approve
of the city girl. but her chic has none
the less surely spoiled the country girl
for him, the usual result being that he
goes into bachelors lodgings until he
has untitled himself ~ tastes and habits
to marry at all.
THESE THINGS CONSIDERED.
it is fortunate for the spinster that she
Is beginning to think it natural and
not altogether unpleasant state of
affairs to be a spinster. They do not
look to me an unhappy lot. these New
England old maids. For one thing, New
England is learning to be tender of
them. She does not call them old
maids. Being SO strong an element in
society. they. perhaps, dictate its atti-
tude toward themselves. At all events.
by a pleasant euphemiSm enough, the
fiction of their perpetual youth is kept
up until they die. You may hear New
England woman speak of the ssFisher
girls or the Simpson girls for weeks
before the truth is borne upon you that
T, the girls are we'll along toward their
SEVENTEEN year. They never married,
and nobody was ever cruel enough to
mark out any line beyond which they
ceased to be young.
They are Self-respecting and re-
Spected, these splnSterS, too. | wonder
II it sounds strange in more SophiSti-
Gated ATTITUDES to be told that there are
to this day New England towns in abun-
dance where the best educated and best
bred Yankee girl of the best old colonial
family can go into the shoe shop, as
Lucy LarcOm and her compeers did into
the Lowell mills when mills and shoe
factories were new, and work there
years after she ceased to be girl, save
by courtesy, and still read the Atlantic,
and move in. perhaps lead. the most
aristocratic society in the place. 1t is
not such bad thing to be an old maid
where you can work at whatever comes
handieSt without loss of dignity, and
whore npinbhnrc hot -, Il
more likely than not to be old maids, too
You are following what is there the
natural destiny of woman. If YOU
marry. then, indeed, comes the wonder,
the surprise. Where did he come from,
who is he and how did it happen that
you took fancy to him. Sometimes
New England village puts an exagger-'
ated value on man, especially new
conner, as rare and unexpected being
who opens new possibilities to half the
girls in the place, but oftener the women
grow so self-dependent, so used to man
aging for themselves. that the unneces-
Sary creature, man, must be very good
indeed to be
GOOD ENOUGH FOR ONE OF THEM.
There is more or less common sense
floating round in New England. and it
is about as good place to be an old
maid in as one could find.
The practical independence of a
Massachusetts woman shows itself in a
monetary self-reliance that has pleas
ant and unpleasant aspects. / have i'll
mind couple, type of some thousands
of others, who have been married six or
eight years perhaps. Before marriage
he was foreman of the lasters in the
inevitable shoe mandatory. She was
boss of the Stitching-rOom He earned
perhaps SIS week. She earned about
S12 to sl4. After marriage both retained
their positions. 1t is part of the creed
of shoe towns that the shOemaker's wife
works in the shop. Usually his wages
compel her to. When that is not the
case. habit, which has bred in the
shoemaker way of giving his wife no
money, cOmpelS her to all the same.
This couple keep house. They have no
children. The wife is proud of her neat
home and rises early and goes to bed
late to keep it in order out of working
hours. She washes summer and winter
before the sun is up. She irons and
cooks and sews by lamp
light. She does all her household
duties well, for she is genuine old
time New England housewife. As an
equivalent for this home labor on his
wife's part the husband pays the rent
and settles the provision bills. All other
money that he earns is his, and it would
give him shock of surprise to be called
upon for penny by his wife. If she
wants furniture she buys it, and has in
vested good deal first and last in up-
holstery and dainty hangings that
women love. She buys her clothing
and puts what she saves into the saw
1ngs bank i'll her own name. The finan-
cial relations of the two are as we'll
defined and as distinct from their con-
jugal relations as if they were business
partners. Even in the matter of beue
lit associations they stand on an exact